Prevention is Better Than Cure - Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus
So then what's stopping modern men and women from preventing themselves?
Who is making decisions on your head? Who is responsible for your life? Only you get to decide that.
Why doesn’t the society care?
Why doesn’t the food industry care?
Why doesn’t the education system care?
Why doesn’t the “health care” system care?
Why doesn’t the government do anything about it?
I’ve been thinking. If prevention is better than cure, then why don’t people care about themselves until they’re sitting across the doctor receiving news about how many months, years more they have on earth? Here’s the entire document published by the Department of Health & Social Care.
How come this wasn’t published as a book on platforms like Amazon? Because that’s the first place I went looking for a book on the subject matter of prevention.
What does it take for people to start caring for themselves?
The answer lies in my question. People don’t care about themselves because they are never taught how to care for themselves.
And no one can care about us better than we can. Because we’re the ones living in our body. We know what we have been through. But does that mean we deserve to mistreat our body?
So then why is this responsibility offloaded to people around us? Sure, it’s important to feel cared for by our loved ones and community. But they can’t do for us what we can do for ourselves.
1. Educate
Becoming a life-long learner of myself, my body and the world around me is an investment. I like to educate myself about natural healing modalities. One of the recent ones I’m learning about is fasting.
I believe in our body’s innate ability to heal itself. When I first came across Louise Hay’s book You Can Heal Your Body, I was blown away. I learned that behind every physical ailment is an emotional blockage, And recognizing that emotional blockage was the key to healing the physical ailment.
This is also why I meditate and pay attention to my emotional wellbeing. It has helped me maintain a healthy weight.
2. Experiment
Become your own lab rat. The information I’m sharing is my own experience and not medical advice. I refrain for taking medication as much as I can. I look for the root cause of whatever is ailing me. For instance, several years ago I found myself in the A & E bending over due to pain in my back. I was referred to specialists after being sent home. The follow-up appointments at the specialist clinic had me run an array of tests. Even the specialist doctors couldn’t find what cause me pain. I was given NSAIDs and was told maybe it’s lupus, but they we’re sure it was that.
My quest to heal myself is endless because I want to live a long healthy life well into my 90s and more. I have every reason to motivate myself because I value health. Who likes waking up in pain every morning? No one.
But that was me. Why? Why? I wasn’t looking to blame the healthy care system or medical science. I wanted solutions and I remained focused on finding out for myself what would end my pain.
3. Enquire & Examine
Sit with it. Something that I learned from meditation was to sit with the uncomfortable feeling and listen to it. I transfer the skills that I learned in meditation to my life by asking my body and listening to it when it “spoke”. Our body communicates to us through sensations, feelings, pain and emotions. We need to slow down enough to sit in enquiry. I tried various modalities to help myself. My curiosity helped me understand that fibromyalgia is symptom of narcissistic abuse. Aha! That explained why I was experiencing pain.
I experimented with foods, brought some changed to my diet. I removed tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant. I noticed how I felt. I took note of my symptoms.
4. Execute & Empower
If you observe your childhood, your behaviors around your immediate caregivers, it will tell you a lot about your relationship with yourself and how you were groomed into the person you are today. It’s not your fault. But knowing what was wrongly practiced helps you make a choice - Will you continue in those old ways especially if they’re not working for you?
Prevention is Better Than Cure
If you make difficult choices, I can guarantee that you will live a more fulfilling life. You will have fewer regrets when death stares you in the face. It’s too late to do anything when you’re dying. That’s why prevention is better than cure. Just because medication is available for some of the diseases doesn’t mean you should have to take it. Because most diseases are preventable.
You can educate, experiment, enquire, examine, execute and empower yourself starting from this very moment.
Decisions are powerful. They make it easy for your to execute and take action toward that which is important for yourself and your loved ones. Our actions and inactions both have consequences. It is in the action you take from the new conscious choices that you make that you will find the power within you to change your life.
You have two choices -
Will you continue offloading personal responsibilities on to others and blame others?
Or will you stop blaming and begin empowering yourself to help and heal yourself?
Neha
P.S.: If you’re looking for way to heal your trauma, then this guide that I put together could help you. Visit Thriving After Trauma. I highly encourage you to become your own n of 1 - your own lab rat. See what works for you and stick with it. Change happens with each person taking this responsibility on themselves.
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